(published as HEAD GAMES)
We were over on the East Side, our third bar that night. In the first one I'd asked the barmaid when things got started. She just smiled at me and you knew that things never got started there. In the second place a drunken blonde was going on and on about what she called the bar's baroque decor. The only way to get rid of her was to leave. Neither Dan nor I knew anything about the East Side. He was from the Village. I was from the Upper West Side. In New York that meant we were both tourists here.
We were also broke but there was enough cash between us for this third bar and we looked pretty good that night and didn't want to waste the creases in our trousers. We sat there feeling pretty snappy, grinning at each other while the music squalled at us from the twin dance floors upstairs. We'd cruised the dance floors and the cruising was very good. Soon something sweaty would slip by looking for a beer and we could make our moves. The place was wholly workable, no question about it.
We had gone to lunch with Dan's agent, who was going to sell this western novel and get him out of the magazines and we'd been drinking ever since. Dan had on his best Brooks Brothers prep look, cashmere V-neck and all, and I wore my all-white Western. My only suit but beautiful. That suit had taken me to lunch. Dan had told his agent it had inspired the entire novel and what did the agent know of the ways of writers? So we sat at the bar thinking about the agent and the good women and smirking contentedly at one another.
Then she walked in.
At first all I saw was money, a thick unrelenting burst of dark hair, a slim body and wonderful pale hands. Delicate hands, sybaritic with rings and bracelets, refined hands with fingers poised like a high-wire man moving on tiptoe along the dark polished wood of the bar. I loved those hands. I'd have loved them on an elf or a troglodyte. Then she turned and buffeted me with a little smile and I felt something melt inside me like warm taffy. She was gorgeous.
"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked her.
"I'm with friends," she said.
I turned around and sure enough there were three other women there, one of whom Dan seemed to know from someplace. While I was staring he had already gotten a conversation going. There was too much noise to know what they were talking about but talk was talk.
"Your friends are with my friends," I said. "So, can I buy you a drink? Name's Tony, Tony Campuzano."
"Stephanie." We shook hands.
I had her hand in my hand. We were touching.
"No," she said. "I don't think so."
"No drink?"
"I'll buy my own, thanks."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
There was no payoff to insisting. She didn't look the type you insisted with. Besides, I had about ten dollars in my pocket and from the stuff she was wearing I figured she could buy my suit and all the trimmings and still have enough left in that little bag of hers to stand a round for Southeast Asia. I was willing to be bought if she offered. I liked it easy and it hadn't been easy for a long time. So I let it go—almost. The only way to get money was to spend money, to prime the pump, right? Or at least appear to.
"Later then. You'll have to let me, eventually. I'm celebrating."
"Celebrating?" She cocked an eyebrow at me that made my stomach churn.
I nodded. "Movie deal. My first screenplay."
Hell, I'm not even a writer.
At the moment I was a short-order cook. That of course was temporary. I was really a high-priced photographer but my Nikon was in hock. The lady looked interested, though. I hated to get them that way but what could you do?
"Really?"
"Yeah." I grinned at her. "A western. I haven't even got a book contract yet but the Fox deal ought to help, don't you think?"
"Fox?"
"Fox. Just came through today so my buddy and I are celebrating. Of course, I haven't got the money yet. But in six months..."
"That's really wonderful," she said.
"It is, it really is." I acted like I was mulling it over, reflecting on all those years of struggle. Then I dropped the bombshell. "There's talk of a series."
"Oh my god!" she said. "Television?" There was a kind of reverence in her voice.
I essayed a modest little smile and then decided enough was enough. "And what about you? What do you do?" I asked her.
"Oh, I run a travel business. Small, but growing. And it suits me." I bet it did. Again I sniffed money. I saw all those free trips to Tahiti and Corfu and Paris. I knew I was thinking like a whore. But try working a burger joint for a few weeks. If the lady had the price I had the time.
A few hours later I found myself trying to kiss that delicate bejeweled hand of hers since she kept laughing and avoiding me whenever I went for her mouth. That was okay, though, because I already loved her. She had high cheekbones and full lips and dark lazy eyes that blinked in sensuous slow motion. Her body was patrician, long and slim, just what I'd always liked best and practically never had a chance with.
I told her there were guests at my apartment. She said that was all right, we'd go to her place, which saved me the considerable trouble of trying to explain a one-room All-City Roach-Fest off Broadway at 79th.
Her place was a three-bedroom first-floor split-level off First Avenue, with a butcher-block table in the kitchen longer than my entire apartment. Oriental rugs and Early American furniture, all good antiques. Paintings—not prints or lithos—by Metzinger, Maholy-Nagy, Marie Laurencin. Every light on its own dimmer. A porch garden that had been healthy for decades. Silver. Mahogany. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. The place was a shrine to the good life. It made my teeth chatter.
"Beautiful," I said.
She slid shrewdly into my arms. I kissed her once and knew it was forever.
We moved across a carpet any thief would kill for and into a brass bed that was not quite as big as a U-Haul and slid between the satin sheets. Her body was a Bentley in a dealership for Pintos. Long tight languorous legs, smooth and cool as glass, a mean boyish ass, low small breasts that pooled to the touch, small dark pointed nipples, all of her perfect and inviting. I gave quiet thanks that seventy-five sit-ups a day had finally done something with my gut.
Fucking her was god's answer to paying taxes. I moved my hands over her in a kind of ecstatic wonder. Everywhere a blend of cool and hot, a new softness, glide of muscle. As for her, she was hungry as a ferret under me, all mouth and tongue and fingernails. I liked the sharp pain dancing across my back, the wildness beneath me. Had I put it to her then I'd have gone off in a minute and this was too good for that. So I moved down between her thighs and drove us both crazy with my tongue awhile. Soon the satin beneath me had a damp feel to it and you could see it streaked with sweat like trails of phosphorus. She began to scream, little yips that caught and died behind the welter of pleasure moving over her like static electricity.
I slavered over her like a mad beast. She sluiced across my cheeks and chin and slid down along the sides of my neck. Then suddenly I lost her in an uncontrollable spasm so I moved up and into her while she grabbed my ass and pressed me that last half-inch inside her and her body performed little miracles beneath me. I felt her wet me to the balls and shake and cry out and slowly fall away. I stayed where I was and let her drop. After a few minutes I began to move again. I'd caught her in the midst of a half-dream. Her eyes went wide and she looked at me for a moment like I was a total stranger. Then I felt her start to tremble again. It was going to be easy to come together this time, and it was.
I rolled away from her and looked at her and then we were grinning like idiots together in the pale light. I'd forgotten every bit of my scheming, the travel and money, until she said we ought to move in together, said it like she knew what she wanted, had found it and it was me.
"Sure," I said.
There would be a few details of my past and present to cover but I said sure like there was no tomorrow. Without her there were only more burger joints and that was no tomorrow either.
&nb
sp; I went home the following morning for a few changes of clothes and then for sixteen days Stephanie and I "honeymooned" at her place. She told me she'd called in for a week's vacation. Boss' prerogative. I never called in at all. They could toast their rolls without me.
We fucked and drank splits of champagne and lived off the ice box and that was about it. Once in awhile we changed the sheets. There was an Irish lady named Doris who came by to clean every other day. No other visitors. We didn't talk business and that was just as well. Once of these days my movie deal was going to have to fall through but I could fake that with a telephone call and a little depression. I just hoped she didn't ask to read the manuscript.
I got used to that apartment quickly. Plenty of toys for me to play with. Stereo, tape deck, video disks, Super-8 camera, even an Arcade-sized Space Invaders game. I became a pornographer, taking miles of footage of Stef naked in the apartment. I intended to edit a montage but I never could get to the editing machine. I could never get enough of watching her, of peering through the viewfinder. Unless of course I was fucking her. There was all that grace and class.
Then one day I was standing naked at the Space Invaders game, still stinking of early-morning rut and she was behind me watching, not paying too much attention, glancing out the window now and then. I could almost feel her smiling. Then she suddenly pulled away from me and of course the damn Invader guys shot me down.
"Shit," I said to the machine and then to her, "What's up?"
I looked out the window. Three people were walking up the steps to the apartment. One of them was the woman Dan had known at the bar. There was another woman I didn't recognize and a tall man in a three-piece suit walking between them.
"Listen," she said. "There won't be time to explain. Don't worry about what's going to happen. Try not to answer to anything these people say. Especially anything they say about me or about us, okay?"
"Huh?"
"Just remember that everything that happens here is going to be a kind of joke. I'll explain later, okay? Please don't take offense and don't say anything, just follow my lead, that's all.
"Okay, sure. But Stef?"
"What?"
"We're naked."
"Oh, shit."
We ran into the bedroom and threw on bathrobes and went back into the living room. I was just belting up when I heard the key in the door. The girl from the bar entered first. She took one look at us and her mouth dropped open. The other girl started laughing.
"Jesus, Stephanie," she said. "Aren't you going a little far this time?" The guy looked puzzled.
Stephanie just smiled. I didn't know what the fuck to do. The one with the keys walked over to Stef. There was something cold in her eyes I didn't like much and even if she was a damned pretty woman in that long white fur and tight jeans and seven-league boots she looked surly.
"Want to explain this?" she asked.
Stef's smile faded a little. "Let's go into the kitchen for a minute, all right?" She said. "You too, Janet, if you don't mind." I hated to hear that tone. There was something almost submissive there.
They trooped off into the kitchen, leaving me feeling stupid standing there in a bathrobe with this guy in a three-piece pinstripe. He didn't look wholly unfriendly. And he looked like he didn't know what was what any more than I did.
We talked about the weather. I hadn't seen the weather for days so I was almost interested.
After awhile Stef came out of the kitchen and took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom. I nodded to the guy and he just looked at me blankly and confused like we were a pair of walking condoms or something.
"What the fuck is going on?" I asked her.
"Look," she said. "I told you it was a joke but maybe trick is a better word. I've known about it all week but it just came at me a bit quickly, that's all, I didn't expect them so soon. The man out there is a lawyer, very successful, very big-time, you know? Laura, the girl in the fur coat, is nuts about him. They've been dating for about a month and I guess it's getting pretty serious. The thing is that Laura is a very smart woman, very educated, but you know what she does for a living?"
"What?"
"She's a stripper. Actually, a topless dancer."
"That lady is a stripper?"
"Topless dancer, yes. And she makes pretty good money at it too. But everything she makes goes on her back as you can see. She lives in a dive over on Avenue A. For years the only guys she's met have been drunks and assholes at the bar and the junkie who lives upstairs from her. Clement is the first really respectable man she's met in two years, Tony."
"So?"
"So I told her I'd loan her my apartment for a while."
"I don't get it."
"I told her she could tell him she lives here, see? He thinks she's a fashion editor at Cosmo. Fashion editors don't live in places where the plumbing is a long tube of rubber. So I told her she could use the place for a few days while she works herself up to breaking the news. It's only for a few days. He loves her. It won't matter in the long run what she does for a living or where she lives. But she told him this thing and now she's got to stick with it for a couple of days."
I could sympathize with that. Sure I could.
"So where do we fit in?"
"We're the unwelcome guests. Unless you want to get out of here and go to your place. Which I think would be a very good idea for a while."
"Uh...I've still got those people there. They're very strait laced, if you know what I mean."
It was clumsy but she bought it. She smiled.
"I really don't want to deal with them, Stef. And neither do you, believe me. I guess we better stay."
"Okay," she said. "Let me go talk to Laura for a minute. You better get dressed."
I got dressed. Then Stef walked back into the bedroom and said that everything was fine now, we just had to remember to keep up the pretense, that was all. I wondered exactly how fine because I could hear Clement's voice in the kitchen and he sounded pretty distressed.
We hardly spoke as the weeks went by. I mean, Stef and I spoke and did what we'd always done and did it very well too, thank you, in the small bedroom to the rear of the apartment. Laura and Clement spoke too. You could hear them fucking and laughing in the big bedroom. Sometimes they argued a little, which I suppose was about us being there. But the four of us almost never spoke together.
It got a little tense sometimes as the weeks dragged by and I took to griping at Stef. When the hell was she going to get rid of them? Why didn't she tell Laura to take her chances and tell the poor guy fair and square just who and what she was? Right now, today?
And then I'd think, listen to me. Jesus.
She couldn't do that, she said. There was a friendship involved here, a favor for an old friend. I couldn't shake her though there were days I definitely tried.
It was one of those days that I had my talk with Doris, the cleaning lady. There had been a particularly icy breakfast between the four of us that morning and I'd been screaming at Stef to tell them to fuck off, friendship be damned. Doris couldn't help but hear me. So when Stef left the apartment to do some shopping there was Doris, shaking her head and clucking at me while she vacuumed. I liked her, so I asked her why she was clucking at me.
"Because you're a very nice man, Mr. Tony. And I don't like to see ya yelling at folks that way, I surely don't. Miss Steffie's a good person too."
I explained our situation, swearing her to a vow of silence. And while I talked I watched her face pucker up and sour like time-stop photography of a rotting melon until her nose saluted the pointy tip of her chin.
"Ah, Mr. Tony," she said when I was finished. "Ah, Mr. Tony."
"Ah what, Doris?"
"I'm afraid that Miss Steffie's misled you. This ain't hers. This is all Miss Laura's place. I've been with her for years. And ya know she's no topless dancer, not a bit of it, she's a..."
I heard no more.
Who cared.
I played Space Invaders until Steph
anie got home. I won some and lost some. When she walked through the door I accosted her like a mugger. Doris had since disappeared in anticipation of the coming storm. Stef told me everything. There was no agency, no job and no money. She had only the clothes on her back. There were tears, downcast eyes, sidelong glances.
I thought about my movie deal.
So I told her. Glances grew darker and more somber and then in awhile a little lighter and soon we were laughing, we were howling. Hell, at least I had a place to sleep. By the time it was all out in the open we both felt lightheaded. We laughed some more and then I took her dainty hand with the phony jewels and led her over to the Space Invaders game for one last battle. I lost. Badly. Probably we were never going to get rich. Fuck it, I thought.
We packed and went to my place and started killing roaches.
The plot of this one is lifted from one of those Spanish ribald tales, the kind you read in Playboy. It's so long ago now that I don't remember who the author was but it might have been Cervantes. Someone, I think, in that period. If anyone reads this and recognizes the original, I'd be pleased to have a letter. So much lying goes on in bars, certainly in New York bars, especially in East Side New York bars, that an updating placed in this setting seemed perfectly natural.
DEAD HEAT
The early-morning traffic was light on West 72nd Street. Outside I heard the trucks slamming over potholes on their way crosstown. The sun crept up my stained office window shade like a swarm of spiders. I pushed myself up off the couch and looked at my watch. I'd been baking there asleep for three hours. The back of my neck felt raw and sweaty. My tongue felt like a cyst. It was mid-August in New York City and the only thing I hated worse was a night like last night, when every woman was a Fury and every drink a long sweet slide into annihilation.
And now there was another knock at the door. It was the knocking that had brought me out of my dream. In my dream somebody had severed my brain stem and was slipping me quietly into a lobster pot. I was grinning and the water bubbled nicely beneath my feet. The knocking had changed all that. I guessed I had something to be thankful for.